The singer taps his forehead with the flat of his hand and blows air out of his stuffed cheeks. His big black mustache presses against his nose. “Pfffoeaa.” The emotion stops him talking for a while. He is in the television studio of El show de Silvio, it is February 2022, opposite him is the Dominican artist Silvio Mora. But the interview stalls. Because the interviewee is back in Caracas, in the early 1970s, where it all started.
In his mind, Oscar D’León is in his late twenties again, already with a distinctive mustache and then still with a large afro. He is no longer a taxi driver, but he is not yet an established artist either. He’s nobody yet, but one night in that one bar he takes the plunge and asks the singer of the orchestra if he can sing a song. Which can. And there he is, for the first time with the full power of a multi-piece salsa band behind him. ‘I sang gloriously, hermano.’
Half a century has passed since Venezuelan Oscar Emilio León Simoza, now 79, made his stage debut. The boy of humble origin turned out to be the right man in the right place. During the golden years of salsa, he became one of the greatest, ‘the pharaoh’ and ‘the devil of salsa’, ‘the dancing double bass’, and because of his unparalleled talent for improvisation also ‘the sonero of the world. ‘, the singer who challenges the orchestra, who dares to play with the sacred 3-2 rhythm.
Main act Kwaku Festival
On Friday 22 July, the pharaoh will perform at the Kwaku Festival in the Bijlmer. Kwaku is almost as old as D’León’s career: the festival started in 1975, as a Surinamese football tournament between the flats of Amsterdam-Zuidoost. With the sport came the food and the music. The event is now a tribute, for four summer weekends, to non-Dutch sounds and flavors. hip hop, r&b, soul, jazz, latin; as diverse as the Bijlmer itself.
The organization gave main act D’León its own evening. For the sonero it is one of thousands of concerts, for the public one of thousands. ‘It’s like going to the Michael Jackson of salsa’, says Dutch jazz and salsa trumpeter Maite Hontelé over the phone. She met D’León in 2012 at the Caribbean Sea Jazz Festival in Aruba. After a joint jam session, he invited her to his Europe tour later that year.
Hontelé therefore knows what to expect from the Kwaku audience: a craftsman and perfectionist who demands the utmost from his orchestra. ‘In the last bars of a song, he already thinks up the tempo of the next song. He instructs the band through codes.’ But above all, he is an entertainer. ‘He captivates you, with his mustache, his appearance, his moves, with his improvisation. He grabs the audience, it doesn’t matter if you speak Spanish.’
Singing taxi driver
Oscar León Simoza grew up as the only child of Carmen Dionisia Simoza and stepfather Justo León in the poor neighborhood of Antímano in southern Caracas. His parents were ‘devoted partygoers’ and home was the sweet spot. “Poor but cheerful.” As a boy he drummed on tin coffee cups. Later, he drummed up auto parts on the General Motors plant assembly line. Later again at the wheel of his taxi, he flirted with his female passengers while singing.
It was the 1960s and the young D’León was listening to Cuban artists such as Benny Moré, Monguito and Celia Cruz. In New York, Johnny Pacheco founded the salsa label Fania Records and salsa exploded. The taxi driver bought instruments with his savings. When his car was a total loss in an accident, there was really room for the music. His life as an artist started at the age of 28, the seventies had just arrived. He was the foreman of the group Dimensión Latina, played the double bass and sang. The mega talent turned out to be able to do anything.
Lloraras
In 1983 he toured Cuba once, the cradle of his music. The Cubans embraced him, a dream came true. But his visit to the socialist island also sparked controversy. Even though he spoke out against Castro, the right-wing Cuban diaspora in the United States sounded strong criticism. He learned to avoid politics. He also rarely speaks about developments in Venezuela. A few years after his country opted for Hugo Chávez’s socialism, he moved to Miami, where he has lived for twenty years.
A sure highlight at the Kwaku Festival: Llorarás, you will cry. It came by accident on the album Dimensión Latina ’75 (1974). One song was missing during recording and D’León said, “I still have some.” He had a bass run and a few words, the rest came on the spot. It would become his biggest hit and his first international success. A song about sweet revenge, but oh so danceable. You made me suffer. But I laugh last. You will cry. Lloraras.
Three times Oscar D’Leon
The singer never lost himself in drink and drugs, but in love. The womanizer fathered 24 children, most of them out of wedlock.
D’León is not an activist, yet he recorded some songs with a message. Like El derecho de nacer (1982), the right to be born. Salsa against abortion.
Fame and wealth did not only bring happiness. In 2013, a box of watches fell on his head, a point hit his left eye. He was able to keep his eye, but lost his sight.